Have you ever seen a movie that featured an actor with physical abnormalities and wondered what the casting call for that role must have looked like? I mean, did they come out and SAY, "We need someone who looks like a freak"? And how does the actor feel about it?

Well, a couple days ago a casting notice went out for Shelter -- a Julianne Moore/Jonathan Rhys Meyers thriller about to start filming in Pittsburgh -- that began to answer those questions. It included a call for people to play West Virginia hillbillies. Specifically, they wanted "unusual body shapes, even physical abnormalities as long as there is normal mobility. Unusual facial features.... We are also looking for a ... girl with an other-worldly look to her. Could be an albino or something along those lines.... 'Regular-looking' children should not attend this open call."

The Pittsburgh-based casting director responsible for this, Donna Belajac, has now been fired -- not because of the casting notice, but because of the uproar that followed her comments quoted in a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review story on Tuesday: "Some of these 'holler' people -- because they are insular and clannish, and they don't leave their area -- there is literally inbreeding, and the people there often have a different kind of look. That's what we're trying to get."
She added that "it's not meant to be a generalization about everyone in West Virginia," but that didn't stop people -- including West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd -- from becoming outraged. The paper's follow-up story on Wednesday included Byrd's declaration that "this casting call reflects the insensitivity and stupidity of a sheltered film industry." (Get it? "Sheltered"? And the movie is called Shelter?? Maybe the pun wasn't intentional.)

Lots of other complaints poured in after the casting call was widely circulated on the Internet, and the film's producers, Emilio Diez Barroso and Darlene Caamano Loquet, responded by firing Belajac and issuing a statement saying the casting call went out "without our knowledge." They also said the film isn't set in West Virginia, and the state won't be mentioned.

Now, it sounds to me like the filmmakers, having found a scapegoat, have hung Belajac out to dry. The casting call said, "In addition to regular folks for scenes in and around Pittsburgh, we are looking for people to populate a West Virginia 'Holler.'" (A "holler" is a secluded rural village.) Where did Belajac get the idea that these scenes would be set in West Virginia if it wasn't in the script or mentioned to her by the producers? Does the script just say "inbred-looking," and Belajac came up with West Virginia on her own? Or did it used to say "West Virginia," and now the producers have back-pedaled and decided to set the freak scenes in Anywhere U.S.A.? I suspect it's the latter.

Too bad for Belajac. And too bad for any abnormal locals who were hoping to be cast!